


Arms Spread Out Wide, Turn Falling Into Flight

by irisesandlilies



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Genre: (as a sign of love), (unrequited) - Freeform, Bucky Barnes Recovering, First Kiss, M/M, Mutual Pining, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson recovering too!!, Sharing a Bed, the ocean and sun are a metaphor for everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:20:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28400811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisesandlilies/pseuds/irisesandlilies
Summary: It was easy, nothing has ever been easy for Bucky. Except this, and that terrifies him.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 71





	Arms Spread Out Wide, Turn Falling Into Flight

**Author's Note:**

> title from [planets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32BdBQDoe7M&ab_channel=Joseph-Topic) by joseph
> 
> unbeta’d

The breeze rolls easily over the surface, brings a sway to the boat that reminds Bucky of ill-lit dance halls lifetimes ago. He tilts his face towards the light, the sun permeates, seeps into his blood and melts the ice. 

He can feel a different warmth saturating him and he cracks an eye open, finds Sam’s lazy smile. 

Sam doesn’t need sun, Sam already glows. 

“Hm?”

Sam shakes his head slightly, like he’s thinking something he doesn’t know how to say. He settles on, “you’re like a cat.”

“A cat?”

“Lying in the sun like that.”

“Careful throwing stones, bird-man.” 

Bucky’s chiding is met with a round of radiant laughter that Bucky wishes he could breathe in. Let the sound swell in his lungs and in his head. Bucky feels giddy with it, the way the ocean breeze drags the sound of Sam’s ease through the air, works it through his hair and settles on his skin. 

Sam curls his hand around Bucky’s shin, always placing little touches that translate some of his brightness and let it sink into Bucky’s skin and muscle, until it’s saturating his bones. Bucky wonders if it’s intentional, a strategic effort to reacquaint Bucky with affection, or something more instinctual. He doesn’t want Sam’s fingertips to settle at the seam of his left arm out of a sense of duty. 

He thinks about asking him, but each time he turns to ask he finds Sam already waiting. Gaze golden with something Bucky has seen on other people’s faces, but never really aimed at him. He thinks he finds his answer there, in the brilliant luster that Sam wears on his face and shines towards Bucky. 

It feels better than the sun. 

He studies the way the water glistens, the easy waltz of the rays across the waves. The tide is rough, teeters on violent and settles for messy. The sunlight doesn’t discriminate. It takes the choppy waves and makes something sparkling. 

“Ever taken the wings over the water?”

Bucky remembers nights in Bucharest, the unrelenting way fragments of memory would pierce his skull, leave gashes to weep on the surface of his thoughts. He remembers thinking that Sam’s wings were a part of him, in the same way Bucky’s arm was a part of him. He remembers feeling nauseous with the memory of tearing them so brutally from his shoulders. 

An apology crawls up his throat and onto his tongue but he swallows it back down. He’s already been forgiven. 

Sam shakes his head, the suggestion curls his mouth and sparks in his eyes. 

“We should try it sometime.”

Bucky shakes his head, offers a terse gesture towards the sky, “heights.” 

A pause.

“I wouldn’t let you fall, Bucky.”

***

Bucky is unable to conceive of an easy way to tell Sam he’s beginning to believe that his snowy drift through streams of blood and ravines of torture wasn’t without reason. That he was meant to exist at the same time and in the same place as Sam. That they were supposed to toe the narrow lines of sanity towards a shining ending that felt better than any beginning.

Instead, Bucky presses a pair of scissors into Sam’s hand, a token of trust. 

“I want you to cut my hair.”

Sam understands, the shift in his posture signifies to Bucky that he has assumed the weight. Sam holds Bucky’s confidence like something precious, cradles it and guards it with his life.

And God, it’s an intense feeling to bestow something adjacent to a gift and have it regarded with extraordinary care. 

Sam doesn’t interject with his inexperience in the realm of hairstyling, rather, closes his palm around the scissors and peers into the parts of Bucky that have been so long neglected they’ve scabbed over into disfigurements on the surface of his heart and soul. 

“Okay.”

The snipping sound settles upon Bucky like absolution. Fingertips skate his scalp, tender in a way he can’t place from any past life. It feels synonymous with rebirth, shedding a corpse onto the tile floor in strands of dark hair. 

It feels odd, it feels lighter, it feels like healing. 

And it’s Sam’s hands sharing in the work.

***

Sam had given Bucky a stack of worn sci-fi novels he’d found at a flea market, faded illustrations and eccentric titles.

Things weren’t ever given to Bucky, they were taken.

The feeling inside him was so vibrant it almost hurt, swelled and pressed against the ladder of his ribs. He didn’t think he could bear it, he’d been instructed on enduring the worst, but not the best. 

Bucky thinks he’ll spend the rest of whatever forever will follow him trying to contain that feeling, bottling it for days when it’s desperately needed. 

On Sam’s bad days the sun goes away, leaving a vacancy in the sky impossible to fill. Rain beats down against the water, unrelenting and agonizing. 

Bucky unfurls that indescribable feeling from his chest in brightly colored ribbons, adorns Sam in them. 

Bucky reads aloud from those gifted books, one hand cradling the book and the other following the curve of Sam’s ankle where his feet rest in his lap, thumb pressing lightly into the woolen clad bone.

Sam is splayed at the opposite end of the couch, throat bared as he studies the ceiling. His fists are loosely tangled in the plush of a blanket, really a roughly woven tangle of yarn, one of Bucky’s earliest attempts at knitting. There’s a feeling inside Bucky that sparks in his chest and settles warm in his stomach, hands that had once orchestrated chaos became hands that crafted comfort. Sam drapes that token of triumph over him and it feels like an even better win for Bucky. All he wants is to create soft, good things for Sam. No one deserves it more. 

At the prolonged break in Bucky’s melodic reading, Sam glances towards him, eyes tired in a way Bucky understands in the corners of his soul. 

“What?”

Bucky shakes his head, frowns slightly at the words teetering at the tip of his tongue but refusing to brave the space between them. 

Nothing, no experience, brilliant or hellish, had prepared Bucky for the feeling of settling into place. Like a sort of vagrant ghost searching aimlessly for a home finally finding an open door. He’s beside himself. A piece of the puzzle fits into place. 

Bucky settles for answering Sam with this: “I hate to say it, but these books were a lot cooler before I lived out the plot.”

And _God_ , Sam’s laughter feels like refuge in the storm.

***

Bucky angles his weight upon the doorframe, tilts his head against the plaster and listens to the waves crowd the shore before retreating back towards the ocean again. The sound soothes an ache inside him, like the coast understands being stripped and ravaged and left waiting for instruction from the tide.

Tentative and slightly restless he asks, “You awake, Sam?” 

It’s not very late, but Bucky doesn’t feel like he’s ever gotten timing right. 

Sam’s hum of a reply is caught in his pillow, a rustling before he’s holding up the sheets in the gentlest of invitation. He waits for Bucky to contemplate the offering, his arm probably aches with the prolonged odd position but it’s little things like that Sam will never mind. Not if it’s for Bucky. 

The place Bucky slots into is warm, warmth is synonymous with safety. 

“C’mere.” Sam pulls Bucky towards him. He goes easily, pliant with exhaustion and trust.

He curls into Sam, sometimes he wishes he could crawl inside him, swim in his veins and swing from his ribs as they rattle with laughter. Sam is the warmest and safest place Bucky can think of and he had brought Bucky to live with him in the warmest and safest place he could think of. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” Sam already knows the answer, but he always asks anyway. He wants Bucky to articulate those thoughts and feelings that were trapped in his chest for decades, thaw them and hold them up to the light. 

So he draws closer and he answers, “yeah.” 

Bucky wants the same of Sam, he watches him forget, sees the truths stick to his tongue as he pushes them aside to make room for others, make room for Bucky. Bucky tries to remind Sam to save some softness for himself, returns the tenderness given when Sam forgets. He tries to heal Sam just as Sam heals him. 

Sam knows his limits, draws his boundaries with defiant strokes, but even he forgets himself sometimes. 

“Did I wake you up?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He feels Sam’s grin curve against his forehead, feather-soft. Settling his arm across Sam’s side, Sam curls his forearm around to splay his fingers across the gold weaving. He keeps the weapon close, tucks Bucky into his bed and closes his eyes with the weight of faith. 

Bucky had been in love once, and the thing about being in love was that you fell out of it. Bucky knows falling, knows it better than any truth, the endless swim through air, the agony of finally hitting the ground. He hit the ground beside the lake. His first fall had taken his autonomy, his own mind, that second one takes a bit of his heart. Every part of him has been taken. 

He’s not in love now, he won’t fall and he won’t wake up on the ground with another piece of him missing. _But_ he burns with something he could have never conceived of before every part of him was disassembled and put back together haphazardly. He’s lying beside the sun. 

Sam doesn’t carry him like something precious, reach out with wary fingertips that never make contact. He’s rough, he’s real, he treats him like a person. All Bucky has ever wanted to be was a person. 

There’s no expectation of a ghost, no tatters of swagger and lilt of an accent to cling to. He expects nothing but the things Bucky gives him. 

It was easy, nothing has ever been easy for Bucky. Except this, and that terrifies him. 

“What’s going on in that cyborg brain of yours?” It’s soft, just shy of an exhale. 

That’s the question Sam always asks in some variation. That’s his favorite iteration, like he really wants to know. More than just jest. Like Bucky’s thoughts have value to him, like he’ll pluck them from the air and tuck them inside him and keep them because they matter. And when Bucky can’t get the words out Sam will find a thread and tug, unravel with careful hands because no one is better at kindness and patience than Sam. 

“I feel like I have nothing to offer you.” Every part of him has been taken and it’s been agonizingly slow fighting for it back.

A huff of breath, it hangs indignant in the air. Sam Wilson is reckless, Sam Wilson is ardent. Sam Wilson has never backed down from a challenge. 

Sam draws his arms around him tighter, pressing Bucky down into him, draws his hands across the planes of his back, pausing to etch small circles with his fingertips. He lets his fingers wander to the base of Bucky’s skull, petting softly right where he had been struck into submission. Bruised into a weapon.

“Yeah, those gears are definitely malfunctioning.” 

Laughter bubbles from some recess in his chest that Bucky doesn’t remember having, like Sam had snuck a hand between his ribs and tucked some fragment of joy there. 

Bucky feels it in his stomach, from his head to his toes. That smile, gapped tooth and brilliant. It slips through the cracks in Bucky’s soul, settles there like glue. He wonders if Sam knows how loved he is. 

He tilts his head slightly to tell him, presses his laughter gently against Sam’s mouth. There are fingers at Bucky’s jaw, coaxing the happiness as lips swallow the sound. 

Yeah, he’s not in love. He won’t fall. 

But Sam is flight and he loves him.

**Author's Note:**

> feeling a lot of feelings about them
> 
> thank you so so much for reading, find me on [tumblr](https://godfreysroman.tumblr.com/)


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